Hazel Park cracks down on vacant houses

Hazel Park Auxiliary Police officers Joe Rodher, left, and Brian Forrester check out a vacant house in the city as part of a new effort to combat problems empty homes can bring to neighborhoods. (submitted photo by Wallace M. Chrouch)

HAZEL PARK – The city’s auxiliary police officers are working a special beat to take a bite out

of blight.

There are hundreds of vacant homes in the city that draw squatters and scrap metal thieves, as well as owners who fail to keep those properties up to code.

But Hazel Park’s Auxiliary Police officers are stepping in to help the city crack down on the problem.

This month, the auxiliary officers began the task of checking out each of the more than 400 empty houses in Hazel Park.

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“We’re trying to supercharge the city’s code enforcement,” said Hazel Park Police Officer Brian Strick, who coordinates the auxiliary police volunteers. Officers will twice a month go through a list of vacant properties and check them out for vagrants, hazards and make sure the houses are properly secured.

Strick originated the idea of using volunteer officers to help the city’s small code-enforcement staff tackle the problems that empty or abandoned houses cause.

City Manager Ed Klobucher, a former auxiliary officer himself, said Strick’s effort will have a strong impact on fighting the blight that empty houses cause.

“We hope this program is successful in not only identifying vacant homes, but in policing the properties to make sure they are not vandalized or causing a problem in neighborhoods.” Klobucher said.

The problems are real and potentially dangerous. Strick remembers finding a charcoal grill squatters had set up in the basement of a vacant house for heating. At another empty home, water had been left running and the basement was deeply flooded with water. Strick has also seen illegal utility hookups made at vacant houses.

“Anything of value, like copper, is being stripped from the houses,” he said. “We’re trying to preserve the value of the (vacant) houses and board them up if necessary.”

Scrap thieves will strip piping and other heavy metal objects from vacant or abandoned houses to turn a small illegal profit. But the cost of the repairing the damage usually runs into thousands of dollars and make the properties less attractive for buyers willing to fix the houses up.

Two weeks ago, Hazel Park police caught two young men and a woman who stripped copper pipes and hot water heaters from two houses in the 700 and 800 blocks of East George.

“They had taken one of the water heaters to a metal recycling place in Detroit and got $6,” said Hazel Park Police Chief Martin Barner. “Just to get that $6 they caused thousands of dollars in damage.”

The suspects are charged with second-degree home invasion, a 15-year felony.

Hazel Park, like many older communities, was hard hit by the recent housing crisis as home values plummeted. Houses were abandoned, foreclosed or failed to find buyers, even at rock-bottom prices.

“This is a national problem that really came home to roost in Hazel Park,” Klobucher said. “We’ve already torn down a couple of hundred houses.”

The city’s code enforcement department, headed by Shelley O’Brien, is staffed with a few part timers.

City officials want to use code enforcement as a way to stabilize neighborhoods and increase the community’s tax base, O’Brien said.

“The auxiliary police are also helping us identify vacant houses,” O’Brien said, adding that banks often fail to notify the city when a house is foreclosed.

The city charges owners of vacant houses a $25 monthly registration fee, and bans owners from renting vacant homes until the houses pass a code inspection, O’Brien said.

Some unscrupulous investors will buy homes in substandard condition through tax or bank foreclosures and rent the properties without registering them with the city.

“It’s a big problem,” O’Brien said. “The owners will rent to somebody who is not in a position to complain, keep the property for a few years and then just let it go. The housing stock gets degraded when it is not kept up to code.”

The city is also asking residents to report vacant houses in their neighborhoods and call 248-546-4074.

“This will be a big mission for our auxiliary police officers,” Klobucher said.